Music Review: Odd couple Plant and Krauss make beautiful music together

October 21, 2007 at 2:00a.m.

By STEVEN WINE

Associated Press Writer

Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, “Raising Sand” (Rounder)

Midway through “Raising Sand,” Robert Plant starts moanin’ and groanin’ as if he were reaching the climax of a Led Zeppelin set.

Alison Krauss somehow manages to stifle a laugh.

Plant has long been musically adventurous, but this is a strange pairing. There’s the 23-year age difference, for starters, and the genre gap between Krauss’ bluegrass and the bluesy rock that made Plant famous.

They sing neither on “Raising Sand.” Instead there’s rockabilly and ’60s-style pop and country and stuff tough to categorize, which contributes to the record’s charm. Producer T Bone Burnett’s sparse but eclectic arrangements make every note count, and the material is well chosen, with songs from Doc Watson, Tom Waits and Sam Phillips among the highlights.

Aside from a couple of Led Zep-style outbursts, Plant is on his best behavior vocally, and he blends beautifully with Krauss’ incomparable soprano. The two singers generate considerable chemistry — enough to leave their audience wanting more. This is not strictly a duet record, alas, with Plant and Krauss each taking solo turns less interesting than the songs they sing together.

And oddly, several lyrics feature Krauss singing of her love for another woman. With Robert Plant in the room? Very rock ’n’ roll, Alison, but it may leave your fans dazed and confused.

Music Review: Carrie Underwood gets rootsy on solid sophomore CD ’Carnival Ride’

By MICHAEL McCALL

For The Associated Press

Carrie Underwood, “Carnival Ride” (Arista)

Most contemporary female country singers start out on the traditional side, then grow increasingly pop as they become more successful. Carrie Underwood reverses that trend on her second album, “Carnival Ride.”

After the six-million-selling “Some Hearts,” where the “American Idol” champ sparked arguments about whether she was country or pop, her second album goes out of its way to prove she’s as down home as any of her Nashville peers.

On songs like “All-American Girl” and “Crazy Dreams,” Underwood presents a rootsier, more organic sound that highlights her middle-American, girl-next-door personality. Moreover, her second album shows growth in how Underwood brandishes her powerful voice. Showing more sensitivity in her range and in interpreting lyrics, the 24-year-old Oklahoman sings with a control that makes her uplifting voice even more effective.

Underwood co-writes four of her new tunes, although working with Nashville pros, it’s hard to detect how big of a role she plays in crafting the lyrics or melodies. The songs range from the album’s first hit, “So Small,” a song with as direct a religious message as her previous album’s “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” to the one-night-stand tale of “Last Name,” in which Underwood challenges her squeaky-clean image by growling lines like, “It started out, ’Hey, cutie, where you from/Then it turned into, ’Oh no, what I have done?”’

Overall, “Carnival Ride” is a strong sophomore effort, with Underwood flashing a surer sense of who she is and where she belongs. However she defines herself, though, the world is wide open for her from here.

‘Chrome Dreams II’: Young confronts mortality without sentiment

By Greg Kot

Chicago Tribune

(MCT)

Two years ago, Neil Young suffered a near-fatal brain aneurysm. He followed it with one of the most beautiful albums of his career, “Prairie Wind” (2005), and then one of the angriest, “Living With War” (2006).

Now comes “Chrome Dreams II” (Reprise), in which Young makes his version of a gospel album — which, of course, doesn’t sound like anyone else’s idea of a gospel album. Life may be a “spirit road,” but where does it end and what is the point? Coming face-to-face with one’s own mortality, as Young did in 2005, will prompt a man to ask such questions.

But “Chrome Dreams II” also is a Young-ian discourse on the way human beings struggle and screw up along the path to enlightenment. “Some are saints, and some are jerks — that’s me,” Young sings. Its tone veers from gentle and prayerful to feisty and downright ugly. Its messy mood swings recall mix-and-match Young albums from the’70s such as “American Stars’N Bars” and “Rust Never Sleeps,” with the Canadian-born singer drawing on styles, songs and musicians from across his career.

The core band consists of one member each from several of his key backing bands: Crazy Horse (drummer Ralph Molina), the Stray Gators (Ben Keith) and the Bluenotes (bassist Rick Rosas). The album title is a reference to the aborted “Chrome Dreams” album from the mid-’70s, which featured early versions of some of his greatest songs. In addition, several “II” songs were written, recorded and shelved by Young decades ago, only to be resurrected for this album: “Beautiful Bluebird” dates from “Old Ways” (1985), and “Ordinary People” and “Boxcar” from “This Note’s For You” (1988).

This spirit of reflection, of looking back across his life to see what still matters to him, runs through the new album. His pleas for spiritual guidance come in many forms: country ballads (”Boxcar,” “Beautiful Bluebird,” “Ever After”), gently swaying soul (”Shining Light,” “The Believer”), thundering guitar workouts (”Spirit Road,” “No Hidden Path”) and a lullaby with children’s choir (”The Way”).

“I don’t know where I’m goin’/Show me now, I’m waiting to see you,” Young sings on “Shining Light.” It’s a question Young has been trying to answer his entire career, and the sense that he can’t settle down, that he flits from style to style like a moth lost in a light bulb factory, is the key to his appeal, and also the root of his failures.

The song “Ordinary People” was ready to go 20 years ago, but Young waited until now to finally put it on an album. “Some songs ... need to wait for the right time,” he explains cryptically in the liner notes. Over nine verses and 18 minutes, Young the songwriter morphs into his Bernard Shakey moviemaker persona, his camera eye panning across the American landscape to glimpse the lives of blue-collar workers, boxers, vigilantes, gun runners, mafia dons and corrupt businessmen. It sounds at times like a big mess, hampered by a gratuitous horn section, but Young’s conviction, punctuated by several deranged guitar solos, gives it a kaleidoscopic grandeur.

Amid a couple of songs that lift Carter Family-like questions to a higher power, there’s a rant from a “Dirty Old Man.” It’s a bristling garage-rocker about a not-so-nice man. He drinks, he carouses with the boss’ wife, he drinks some more. But his knees ache and he’s trying to get fit, stay employed, quit the bottle. He’s irascible, prickly, unpredictable and looking for a little tenderness amid the wreckage his life has become.

The Dirty Old Man is the key to understanding Young’s version of gospel music. If you’re going to meet your maker sooner rather than later, Young suggests, make sure you do it on your own terms.

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Greg Kot: greggregkot.com

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Special to The Hartford Courant

Jimmy Eat World

“Chase This Light”

Interscope

Mesa, Ariz., quartet Jimmy Eat World has always been a reluctant standard-bearer for the “emo” brand of alternative rock. With “Chase This Light,” its first full-length album in three years, the band stages a passive-aggressive rebellion against the tag.

Musically, Jimmy Eat World’s recipe is simple and effective: Start with persistent, locomotive drum beats, add layer upon layer of throbbing guitar riffs and top it off with howling vocal harmonies. On each track, power chords urgently build toward a satisfying crescendo, without lapsing into soft rock.

Usually, the band’s collective songwriting process suffuses this mix with complex themes and reasonably profound, impassioned observations. But “Chase This Light” is like the sensitive guy who tries to act tough by getting a tattoo and turning up his amp. Although the effort is earnest, it’s difficult to tell one emotion from another -- from the romantic optimism of the title track to the frustrated pessimism of “Feeling Lucky,” everything rocks, but nothing resonates.

By taking the emo out of the group’s formula, Jimmy Eat World has reduced itself to (at best) hollow alt-rock or (at worst) shallow alt-punk. “Chase This Light” only proves that because the band is going to be categorized anyway, it ought to do what it does best.

-- Jason Hammersla